47 replies to this topic

[DarkFlameSheep]

I don't decide Zelda1 Type A or B. But in Japan, The Mysterious Murasame Castle was released two months after Zelda1. I believe it's completely Type B.

Edited by DarkFlameSheep, 24 May 2021 - 08:04 PM.

[SkyLizardGirl]

I nulled vote, did not vote, i don't believe in the system.

[James24]

This is the first I've heard of level 6 being much easier in prototype and then becoming more difficult just prior to release.  Do you have any credible sources or other evidence for this Russ?

 

With regards to Super Mario Brothers 2, I never said anything about its popularity in Japan.  I simply pointed out a true fact that it was initially rejected in America because it was a type B game.  I also never said anything about its popularity once it was put out on SNES.  By the way, the Lost Levels on the SNES is not the true Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2.  There's one big nerf to it - you get 5 lives and you restart at the beginning of the last stage you played.  In the original version, you only get 3 lives and you restart at the beginning of the last world you played - which makes it much, much harder.  So the fact that it sold well in the SNES era can't really be used as evidence because of this glaring difference.

 

And finally, Shigeru is a he from what I've seen from the very credible sources on Gaming Historian see:

 

The Story of Super Mario Bros. 2 | Gaming Historian - YouTube

 

Picture certainly looks very male.

 

As for Shigeru's later tendency to stay away from type B tastes.  I think its because he learnt the hard way that type B games cause a lot of controversy so he steered clear of them after the SMB2 fiasco.  After all, he was following the money and the money told him not to .  But what would be really interesting is if he made a game that he wasn't paid to make like we see here on purezc.  Then only would you see his true colours.

Edited by James24, 24 May 2021 - 11:46 PM.

[SkyLizardGirl]

This is a pretty flawed take IMO, for a few reasons:

1. Games back then had instructions for playing, which is the equivalent of tutorials now. The only difference is that they were found in the manual because games didn't have the storage space to include them in the software. Games from the 80's have the illusion of being newbie-unfriendly because people only retrospectively look at the game in isolation, rather than the game + manual. That said,
2. Many games were newbie-unfriendly back then. Game design wasn't figured out to the degree it was today, and many game designers weren't very good by today's standards. It's mostly these games that got it right and successfully taught their players that are cherished, while the cryptic trash is forgotten outside of nostalgia.
3. Kids in the 80s/90s had a far more limited access to games than they do today. Back then, you rented one game and that was your entertainment for the weekend. If it was tricky to figure out, you were shit outta luck - you either persisted with it or you didn't play that weekend. Nowadays games are everywhere - if a game wastes your time with cryptic bullshit, it's easy to move on to something else. Old-school gamers are only "strong" because that's what the medium demanded at that time, not because they're superior gamers or anything like that. Had gamers had today's access back then, they would've moved on just as quickly.
4. Games today are, largely, more complex than games of the 80s, and are therefore more mentally demanding. With that complexity comes a higher learning curve and a greater need for player instruction. Tutorials and in-game instructions exist because "press every button" is no longer sufficient to teach you how to play. An 80s gamer would struggle just as much - likely more so - trying to figure out a modern game without instructions than a modern gamer would - particularly if it held more closely to modern design conventions.
5. Granted, there was a generation or two where the pendulum swung the other way and many games held players' hands too much. I think it's come back to a more sensible middle ground now though.

 

TL:DR: Your bf's "strength" is the product of his environment - nothing inherent to himself to take pride in. His attitude towards tutorials and "weak new age players" is naive.

 

It's not Naive it's true.*  He figured out impossible things even cryptic things gamers nowadays could never achieve or realize.

 

Many of you snub cryptic stuff as things that are to be tossed out of games in the present times, but those cryptic things are exactly what made the older games unique, unlike anything now, that is just Spoonfed or 'Go Buy an Amiibo' if you want said secret..

 

All Nes Games in the past most people got used ones from stores or video sales, and did not have instruction booklets all the time. 

There weren't really nostalgic game collectors yet, like there are now.  Times were different in the 80's in the past.

 

So that is not entirely true, those booklets usually got thrashed by kids or lost. 

So yes players had to rely entirely on their own mind and skills.

 

Your perspective of how people played games back then, is just conveniently polished to appeal to the norm Nintendo gamer now, and your assumption everything they needed that would help them with the games was there, 'was not' always there.

 

There were very complicated games back then like D & D and Rpgs most americans did not get, but still a large majority of Japanese got.

 

You had to look in Nintendo power or purchase strategy game guides if you wanted to be as savy as you'd claim people are just automatically nowadays, the difficulity of today is actually much easier than it was in games of the past,

Games today are hardly complicated. Breaking speed or score records is the only challenge for gamers today and that coincides with the Arcade or platformer gamers.

 

The reason for this, 'People nowadays will not want to play complicated games, and instead just move on like you say or get bored.'

I will say the most intelligent gamers will try to get the most out of games with Rpgs or large adventure based games instead of just stooping to arcade level gaming for the moment.

 

You are only talking about the Arcade based games that of being simple, not the games more fleshed out with more playability and

content.

My hubby is right and he knows not many could have beaten the more complicated games without a helping hand.

 

He was a master at figuring out cryptic things before others could or write strategy guides about them.

My hubby's knowledge even goes before the 80's to the 70's.

 

He lived through the great game crash as a kid before Nintendo picked it back up with their games, so he vastly played nintendo games without even knowing what to do and never picked up an instruction booklet until after he mastered at a game.

 

---- 

All in all games are 'Much much easier in the future'  than they are in the past.

So it is actually reverse of what you were saying. 

 

Because a complicated game now,  would not be as popular or appeal or get as much recognition from people of today as you say they would run off to the next best thing. MMO's, puzzles and military type mathematic games are amongst the most complicated games in the future than the norm, besides action/fighting/platformer.

 

Games in the past were practically impossible with limited lives and such, or 1 shot and your dead type mechanics.

Edited by SkyLizardGirl, 25 May 2021 - 01:05 AM.

[Russ]

This is the first I've heard of level 6 being much easier in prototype and then becoming more difficult just prior to release.  Do you have any credible sources or other evidence for this Russ?

Yes I do. Here's the Cutting Room Floor's page on the prototype build.. The notable part:

Both Wizzrobes' beams do less damage in the prototype. The Blue Wizzrobe's beams went from 1 heart to 2 hearts of damage, and the Orange Wizzrobe from 2 hearts to 4(!) hearts.

In addition, several red wizzrobes in level 6 were changed to blue wizzrobes in the final build. These apparently last minute changes were responsible for the huge difficulty spike in level 6. Basically, level 6 is not a remnant of a harder game that got nerfed due to fear of reception. It's instead the result of a last minute decision to raise the difficulty that brought it out of line with the rest of the game.

As for Shigeru's later tendency to stay away from type B tastes. I think its because he learnt the hard way that type B games cause a lot of controversy so he steered clear of them after the SMB2 fiasco. After all, he was following the money and the money told him not to . But what would be really interesting is if he made a game that he wasn't paid to make like we see here on purezc. Then only would you see his true colours.

Again, I disagree. If you look at some of his recent decisions, they've attracted quite a bit of controversy for the opposite reasons: being too easy and trying to be too artsy (look at his mandate that Paper Mario on the 3DS be altered dramatically, for example). Basically, he's facing criticism from all directions for being too type A. I think this entire idea of him you've built in your head is mostly projection and doesn't line up with the evidence.

[DarkFlameSheep]

Or does A of Type A mean Arcade? Many Nintendo NES games are still arcade style, for instance Super Mario Brothers 1 and 2. But Zelda 1 and 2 are no longer arcade style.

Edited by DarkFlameSheep, 25 May 2021 - 07:38 PM.

[James24]

Russ - I don't think that what you've presented is conclusive evidence of the difficulty being raised.  Instead, I think its proof that the difficulty was being balanced as all games rightly should do prior to release.  In dungeon 6, there's a room which was nerfed from traps and wizzrobes to keeses and fire-ball shooting statues.  If they were going to outright raise the difficulty then they surely wouldn't use keeses to do it.  In dungeon 7, there were nerfs put in several rooms.  Please explain these contradictions?

 

Also, there's no evidence to suggest that the prototype version of dungeon 6 was not a type B challenge on its own.  How do you know that before they put in these changes that it wasn't already a huge difficulty spike?  Perhaps they already intended dungeon 6 to be a difficulty spike and were simply balancing the enemies and enemy numbers to fit that vision - as all games properly should.

 

Shigeru is a paid game designer.  A paid game designer needs to put the needs of his audience before his own for one simple reason - the money.  So anything he puts out after he's been on the job for a while should be taken with a grain of salt.  Is it really his design decision or is it a decision he's taken to extract money from his audience?  Hard to tell.  If Nintendo tells him to make type A games then he is obligated to do so as a paid employee of the company.  He simply isn't in a position to make a type B game when his payer is telling him to do the opposite.

 

 

I have more proof that NES Zelda was originally intended as type B.  See this video here on the creation of Zelda series:

 

The History of The Legend of Zelda Series - From Pixels to Polygons - YouTube

 

Shigeru Miyamoto was the director of both the original Legend of Zelda and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.  Original Zelda and Zelda 2 are both noted for their difficulty and their focus on combat elements of the game.  Zelda 2 in particular is regarded as the black sheep of the series because of its focus on combat and being quite difficult.  Shigeru stopped working on future Zelda releases and new developers worked on them.  Once Shigeru was gone, Zelda became very type A because that was the vision of the new developers.

[The Satellite]

Shigeru Miyamoto was the director of both the original Legend of Zelda and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.

Miyamoto didn't even direct Zelda 2, only produced it. It was directed by Tadashi Sugiyama and Yasuhisa Yamamura, credited as SUGIYAN and YAMAHEN in-game because NES credits were weird. Your "proof" is just your own confirmation bias at work.
 

He was following James's third law of quest making.

 
also lol get the fuck over yourself
 

Because a complicated game now,  would not be as popular or appeal or get as much recognition from people of today as you say they would run off to the next best thing.

 
And as mentioned before in this thread, Dark Souls and other FromSoftware games exist, and they're massively popular, so. And if you want indie examples, Cuphead and especially Hollow Knight. If by "complicated" you mean games with in-depth systems i.e. JRPGs, those are still going strong. 

[SkyLizardGirl]

Games have gotten more complicated in the form of a-lot more moving parts, But simple navigation tutorials are done to make the game easier for the players of today, its what's expected, games now cannot go without this unless they are meant as arcade genre.

Edited by SkyLizardGirl, 26 May 2021 - 01:09 AM.

[Moosh]

Shigeru is a paid game designer.  A paid game designer needs to put the needs of his audience before his own for one simple reason - the money.  So anything he puts out after he's been on the job for a while should be taken with a grain of salt.  Is it really his design decision or is it a decision he's taken to extract money from his audience?  Hard to tell.  If Nintendo tells him to make type A games then he is obligated to do so as a paid employee of the company.  He simply isn't in a position to make a type B game when his payer is telling him to do the opposite.

In the 80's, wouldn't the consumer pressure on games be to make them harder though? Since games were mostly purchased by parents of children to keep said children pacified, longer and harder games make for lesser expenses. And because of the hardware constraints of the time, difficulty was much easier to develop for than length. 

 

I played through the prototype recently and it is indeed pretty easy, though there was one pretty dickish move in level 9 where the silvers were beind the only walk-through wall in the game. Funny story about that build, it had some old save files on the rom, presumably from the last testers that played that build and their death counts are hilariously large, even for test data. It really paints a picture of a time when games were developed by adults with real jobs to be enjoyed by children, rather than by overworked wage slaves to be sold to manchildren. 

[Rambly]

why are you guys still arguing with james24 lmao

And finally, Shigeru is a he from what I've seen from the very credible sources on Gaming Historian see:
 
The Story of Super Mario Bros. 2 | Gaming Historian - YouTube
 
Picture certainly looks very male.

wait, i just realized the implication is that someone in this thread called shigeru miyamoto a girl but i cant find it lol

[DarkFlameSheep]

 

why are you guys still arguing with james24 lmao

We only want and enjoy to play with him.

Edited by DarkFlameSheep, 26 May 2021 - 04:32 AM.

[James24]

Moosh, in the 80s Nintendo didn't know as much about game design as they do now.  Shigeru has just delivered the company 2 best selling products that made profits beyond their wildest imagination - The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers.  So if he wanted to have a bit more latitude then its understandable that Nintendo would allow him that latitude especially since Nintendo wouldn't have known any better at the time. 

 

Shigeru also figured that the audience was already familiar with his games so he ramped up the difficulty in both sequels - Zelda 2: The adventure of LInk and Super Mario Brothers 2.  After all, the audience who was already familiar with the game should be able to handle harder difficulty.  Its only on the disastrous release of Super Mario Brothers 2 in America did Nintendo realize their mistake.

 

This was rectified for the sequel Super Mario 3.  In Super Mario 3, there were plenty of powerups and other artificial means were put in to ensure that new players were accommodated for when they first played the game see its history here:

 

The Story of Super Mario Bros. 3 | Gaming Historian - YouTube

 

So Nintendo, with its many years of experience, has probably figured out that type A is the taste of game that makes the most profit.  They lean on their game designers to make type A games and even the great Shigeru, no doubt a type B player, must listen to the power of the all mighty dollar.  But that only applies to the world of gaming where profit is the main motivator.  If profit is taken away, then people will make whatever game they like and not listen to anyone else.  They will simply follow James's law 1 and law 2 of quest making and that's what we see here in purezc.

 

Finally, its not really fair for you to play the prototype version since you know everything about NES Zelda.  Only people with no knowledge of the game can be counted as proper playesters.  I can zero game NES zelda with 3 hearts you know?  But when I played NES Zelda as an 8 year old child for the first time on NES, I couldn't beat dungeons 6 for days no matter how hard I tried.  Then I got Zelda 2 and once again I got stuck many times with first the Death Mountain trail to get the hammer and then on level 5 boss and then on the shadow at the end.  Strangely this was all very satisfying no matter how much I kept dying.  So there's no doubt in my mind that Old School Zelda is 100% type B.

[Evan20000]

It really paints a picture of a time when games were developed by adults with real jobs to be enjoyed by children

[DarkFlameSheep]

If Miyamoto made Zelda1 as Type B, when he was young. Now he is 68 years old so I think he mightn't play hard games to test well unlike then...

Edited by DarkFlameSheep, 27 May 2021 - 02:44 AM.